Open Source

Profound Open Sources UI Tool Framework

By Adrian Bridgwater, April 12, 2013

Improved integration with IBM i and better security

Profound Logic has open sourced its User Interface application development tool framework citing user and developer flexibility among its key reasons for doing so. Profound UI version 4.5 will now also benefit from improved integration between the IBM i and other compatible platforms.

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NOTE: Profound initially released its IBM i modernization and development platform in 2010 alongside the announcement of Rational Open Access for RPG by IBM. RPG itself is a high-level programming language for business applications.

This newly open sourced 4.5 version of the software sees the addition of RPGsp to the Profound UI Suite, security enhancements and parameter markers, plus updates to the visual designer and widgets.

NOTE: RPGsp was the predecessor to the Profound UI modernization framework, and provides many time-saving features that enable RPG developers to reuse RPG assets and extend or create modern, web-based applications.

Users can access the source code at no cost on GitHub here, and examples of RPG and PHP programs that use the open-source framework are also available.

The Profound developer team explains that before version 4.5, Profound UI users could control SQL components by using their own code, but this could allow malicious activities by SQL injection. "To protect against this, we've introduced an Enhanced SQL Security mode to Profound UI. This mode prevents developers from writing code with security flaws," said the company.

The features offered within the Profound UI Framework are in some ways similar to what's offered in other popular JavaScript frameworks, such as jQuery, ExtJS, and Dojo. However, unlike most other JavaScript frameworks, Profound UI is designed to be driven by a server-side language, such as RPG or PHP, rather than just client-side JavaScript. This way, RPG and PHP developers can be productive right away in creating functional web 2.0 applications. They can do most tasks using just server-side code, while HTML, JavaScript, and CSS coding would only be required for advanced functionality.

NOTE: The user interface itself is defined through a simple JSON configuration, rather than programming. In Profound UI, this JSON file is referred to as a Rich Display File. Once the UI is described, it can be controlled by RPG/CGI, PHP, or any other web-capable language.

"In addition to creating applications using JSON in the open-source framework, customers can avoid the effort of manual coding and continue to develop applications using our commercially available modules in the Profound UI suite, including a full-featured Visual Designer for describing the UI, an RPG Open Access Handler and an automated green screen DDS-to-Rich UI conversion module," said the Profound team.

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